Thankfully, there are a lot of things about modern Germany that Hitler wouldn’t have liked: Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil – brilliant footballers of African, Tunisian and Turkish descent – lighting up the German national team with flair, physical presence and athleticism. Or The Scorpions, German heavy rock musicians, performing shows to sold out crowds all over the world and writing hit songs about Germany’s friendship with Russia.

And now, it seems, there are Germans who play cricket. Proper rules: pads, gloves and sometimes even helmets.

Last May, 34 of them jumped out of small open boats, onto the beach at Heligoland. There was no mooring place for the Cuxhaven Ferry on this famous little island, which used to be a British colony before the Brits traded it for Zanzibar in 1890. THCC Rot-Gelb Cricket Hamburg were to play Heligoland Pilgrims, a team made up of Hamburg players and friends from other local clubs. The same two sides met at the same place last year for the island’s first cricket match. Some players wore their whites on the ferry. Time was short. A two-day, two-innings, 30-overs-a-side match to get through. A return ferry to catch the following evening.

The game went to a nail-biting finish. The Hamburg captain was caught at long on with nine to win. “An unnecessary bold shot,” Hamburg player Tim Tigges called it. Tigges, who first played cricket at Green Point Cricket Club in Cape Town, wasn’t complaining though. The shot, the tension, as the ball flew towards the boundary fielder, just added to the drama.

Moritz Hagenmeyer, who bowls “slow-motion donkey-drops” for Heligoland Pilgrims, sees himself as the happy eccentric who plays for friendship, fun and the sheer joy of taking part. Hagenmeyer – who has followed the game since 1981 when he lived in Sidmouth and watched Botham’s Ashes on TV – says: “I can’t really play at all, but my friends know I’m mad, so it doesn’t matter.”

Tigges thinks that it’s a good job for England that Germans didn’t take to cricket too seriously. “Will, determination, gamesmanship, efficiency, tactical awareness – with all our clichéd characteristics, we’d have been a premier cricketing nation by now,” he says. “But aren’t England used to inventing great games only to see other countries learn to play the game better?”

HPCC in The Nightwatchman

Every cricket fan on earth knows Wisden, full name: Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack, the annual reference book which, having been published since 1864, holds the esteem of Bible and Quran in the world of cricket. Since 2012, The Nightwatchman – The Wisden Cricket Quarterly, is dedicated to comprehensive and high quality articles dealing at least partly with cricket. Matt Thacker, The Nightwatchman’s editor, explains his and his team’s priorities when compiling an issue of this magazine: “… quality of writing, geographical mix, split of cricket journalists and ‘outsiders’, gender mix, subject range, mix of big names and unknowns.”
Crispin Andrews meets a number of these criteria with his article “Complicated, illogical, effeminate” in the latest issue. The text deals with the history of cricket in Germany – and thus actually contributes the desired geographical mix. Allegedly the title is a quote of Adolf Hitler and mentions what Hitler did not like regarding cricket.
It is quite fortunate that Mr Andrews found more Germans than Hitler who are occupied with cricket and whom he could quote. Amongst others, he got in touch with a couple of Pilgrims and members of their sister club THCC Rot-Gelb Hamburg. It appears that Crispin himself was glad not to have to end his journey article with Hitler because he writes:

Thankfully, there are a lot of things about modern Germany that Hitler wouldn’t have liked: Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil – brilliant footballers of African, Tunisian and Turkish descent – lighting up the German national team with flair, physical presence and athleticism. Or The Scorpions, German heavy rock musicians, performing shows to sold out crowds all over the world and writing hit songs about Germany’s friendship with Russia.

And now, it seems, there are Germans who play cricket. Proper rules: pads, gloves and sometimes even helmets.

Last May, 34 of them jumped out of small open boats, onto the beach at Heligoland. There was no mooring place for the Cuxhaven Ferry on this famous little island, which used to be a British colony before the Brits traded it for Zanzibar in 1890. THCC Rot-Gelb Cricket Hamburg were to play Heligoland Pilgrims, a team made up of Hamburg players and friends from other local clubs. The same two sides met at the same place last year for the island’s first cricket match. Some players wore their whites on the ferry. Time was short. A two-day, two-innings, 30-overs-a-side match to get through. A return ferry to catch the following evening.

The game went to a nail-biting finish. The Hamburg captain was caught at long on with nine to win. “An unnecessary bold shot,” Hamburg player Tim Tigges called it. Tigges, who first played cricket at Green Point Cricket Club in Cape Town, wasn’t complaining though. The shot, the tension, as the ball flew towards the boundary fielder, just added to the drama.

True words, if one can believe our own report of this match. The Erdinger Alkoholfrei Atlantik-Cup certainly is a great example of how one can lead the spirit of cricket also in the remotest corners on earth. And it is also a great idea that cricket lovers all over the world can now read about this in the Nightwatchman. They can learn to connect Germany with a rather friendly approach to cricket, if Andrews quotes our president (although Andrews made a mistake because our president only spent his holidays in Sidmouth):

Moritz Hagenmeyer, who bowls “slow-motion donkey-drops” for Heligoland Pilgrims, sees himself as the happy eccentric who plays for friendship, fun and the sheer joy of taking part. Hagenmeyer – who has followed the game since 1981 when he lived in Sidmouth and watched Botham’s Ashes on TV – says: “I can’t really play at all, but my friends know I’m mad, so it doesn’t matter.”

If you want to read the whole article, you can download it (#7) for small change as an ebook on the Nightwatchman’s website. This issue is particularly interesting for German cricket lovers – because it contains a second article on Germany: “In search of Felix Menzel – Dan Waddell becomes obsessed by a man who lived for cricket in Nazi Germany”.
Apparently English writers cannot but mention Germany in connection with the Nazi period. Then it is only fair if Crispin Andrews concludes his article with a tit-for-tat-response:

Tigges thinks that it’s a good job for England that Germans didn’t take to cricket too seriously. “Will, determination, gamesmanship, efficiency, tactical awareness – with all our clichéd characteristics, we’d have been a premier cricketing nation by now,” he says. “But aren’t England used to inventing great games only to see other countries learn to play the game better?”